Mohammad Amir, a Fallen Cricket Star, Seeks Redemption

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Mohammad Amir in 2010. Banned five years for rigging plays, he will return to organized cricket in March.CreditCreditGlyn Kirk/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By Huw Richards

Feb. 6, 2015

LONDON — He is not playing in the forthcoming World Cup. He has not played organized cricket for the better part of five years, and his next match will be in Pakistan’s minor leagues. Yet nothing in cricket in 2015 is likely to be more fascinating than Mohammad Amir’s pursuit of redemption.

The game has had nothing quite like it before — a player returning from a long ban for spot-fixing at an age where he can still hope to have a long international career. Amir, a fast bowler, will be a month short of his 23rd birthday on March 9, when he is scheduled to return to organized cricket with the Omar Associates team in Karachi, Pakistan.

“We have signed Amir to play for our team in Grade II, as we think that everybody deserves a second chance in life and career,” said Nadeem Omar, director of Omar Associates.

Amir remains ineligible for international cricket until Sept. 2, when the five-year ban imposed by the International Cricket Council for spot-fixing — committed during Pakistan’s tour of England in 2010 — expires.

The Pakistan Cricket Board petitioned for his early return to domestic cricket, a plea that was accepted on Jan. 29 by Ronnie Flanagan, the former senior police officer who heads the I.C.C.’s Anti-Corruption and Security Unit. Every step taken by Amir will be scrutinized in terms of the likelihood of his returning to the highest levels of cricket.

But Shaharyar Khan, president of the P.C.B., has denied suggestions that his body is fast-tracking Amir’s return.

“In the period before his ban expires — and even after that — Amir will be constantly monitored on and off the field,” Khan told Agence France-Presse. “He has to satisfy the P.C.B. and the A.C.S.U. before getting into international cricket.”

Khan said Amir had received some leniency because he had shown more remorse than the other two Pakistani players who were caught in a sting by The News of the World, a now-defunct British Sunday newspaper. Mohammed Asif, another fast bowler, already had a long rap sheet that included drug offenses. The other player was Pakistan’s captain, Salman Butt.

In 2010, Amir was the most junior member of a hierarchical locker room. He was caught overstepping the bowling mark on pre-agreed deliveries so that bettors could place money on their being ruled “no balls,” by a News of the World reporter whose methods are now under legal scrutiny. The newspaper was closed in 2011 over its involvement in Britain's phone-tapping scandals.

All three players served time in jail in Britain, although only Amir admitted his guilt; Asif and Butt denied theirs.

“There’s an incentive to players that if you have messed up, there’s a way back,” Dave Richardson, chief executive of the I.C.C. and a former player for South Africa, told Reuters. “Don’t forget that Amir will have been out of international cricket for five years. That’s more than half a career.”

“He admitted his involvement and since then he’s made every effort to disclose everything that he knows to help the A.C.S.U. with their education programs,” Richardson continued. “Therefore I think that he served as a good example to players who might have got involved in the past, regret what they have done and there’s a way for them to come back in due course.”

In an interview, Amir seemed smarter than the innocent villager portrayed by some commentators, but at the same time, likeable and grounded. Nasser Hussain, the former England captain, may have been speaking for many when he said: “Please don’t let it be the kid.”

Yet some still feel he has got off lightly. “I am all for rehabilitation and for finding ways to set a young man back on course in life,” Ramiz Raja, a former chief executive of the P.C.B. who played on earlier Pakistan teams that were blighted by fixing, wrote last November for the website ESPN Cricinfo. “But it just can’t be in the very game that he sullied and brought disrepute to.”

One-third of 12,000 people who replied to an online poll in Dawn, a newspaper in Pakistan, opposed his return. A social worker, Faiz-ul-Haq Hasan, has brought an action in the Sindh High Court demanding that Amir be banned for life. “Amir stained the image of the country,” Hasan told Agence France-Presse. “He is a proven fixer and will do it again if he is allowed to play again.”

The court is scheduled to hear that case on Feb. 16, but it seems most likely that Amir will get the wish he expressed in January 2014 when he was interviewed for “Death of a Gentleman,” an independent documentary about the future of cricket. “I believe cricket suffered because of me. Fans were disheartened because of me. I want to make them happy and win them over again.”